When the Hawker plane made its first test flight on November 6, 1935, it was still without a name-the Air Ministry did not approve ‘Hurricane,’ the name suggested by the manufacturer, until June 1936. The Hurricane’s maiden flight impressed the Air Ministry, but there were still some who had their doubts about such an ‘unconventional’ airplane-one that had eight machine guns and an enclosed cockpit. The first order of 600 Hurricanes was not placed by the Air Ministry until seven months after the initial test flight.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Enclosed cockpits, retractable landing gears and other features that would become standard for World War II-era airplanes were considered too unorthodox by many authorities, even as late as the mid-to-late 1930s. High-ranking officers who had flown during World War I were accustomed to open cockpits, fixed wheels, struts and supporting cables. Wood and fabric biplanes were familiar; monocoque monoplanes were new and strange to them. And the ‘old school’ types had a good deal of influence in the pre-1939 RAF.

Some World War I pilots even insisted that the monoplane would always be outclassed by the biplane, because a biplane could always outmaneuver any monoplane. If those officers had had their way, the RAF would have faced the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf-109s with obsolete Gloster Gladiators in the spring and summer of 1940. It was that line of thinking that made Dowding’s job of upgrading and modernizing the RAF more difficult.

The first RAF unit to be equipped with the Hawker Hurricane was No. 111 Squadron, which received its new fighters late in 1937. Production went into high gear during the following year, after the Air Ministry realized that the coming conflict was not far off. By the time war was declared, just under 500 Hurricanes had been delivered. Eighteen squadrons had been equipped.

Although it may appear from their close completion dates that the Hurricane and Spitfire were developed in parallel, the fact that they appeared on the scene at roughly the same time was purely coincidental. Work on the Spitfire design actually began several years before the Hurricane, but because it was a more complex and innovative airplane, it took longer to develop. Eventually, 14,000 Hurricanes would be built and 22,000 Spitfires (including Royal Navy Seafires).

During the Battle of Britain, between July and September 1940, 19 squadrons of Supermarine Spitfires (372 aircraft at peak on August 30) and 33 squadrons of Hawker Hurricanes (709 aircraft on August 30) faced the Luftwaffe from airports throughout southern England. Other fighters were also employed, such as the grossly underpowered Boulton Paul Defiant, which was no match for the Messerschmitt Bf-109 in spite of its four-gun power turret (neither was the twin-engine Bristol Blenheim). A squadron of Gloster Gladiator biplanes was actually assigned to defend the Royal Naval dockyards at Portsmouth. But the brunt of the fighting was taken on by the Spitfire and the Hurricane.

The Luftwaffe had tried to destroy the RAF, especially the RAF Fighter Command, during the Battle of Britain and had conspicuously failed. This failure was almost entirely due to the ‘unconventional’ creations of Reginald J. Mitchell and Sidney Camm. Dowding’s insistence upon equipping the RAF with these two fighters while he was still attached to Supply and Research paid large dividends in the skies over the south of England during the summer of 1940. But the question persists as to which was better, the Hurricane or the Spitfire. Pilots have been making comparisons between the two airplanes for more than 50 years. Wing Commander Robert Stanford-Tuck said the Spitfire was like ‘a fine Thoroughbred racehorse, while the dear old Hurricane was rather like a heavy workhorse.’

‘After many years of reflection,’ said a former Spitfire pilot during the 1980s, ‘I take the view that it took both of them to win the Battle of Britain, and neither would have achieved it on its own.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to